epic last design trip

Kibogora Hospital master plan and campus expansion, Rwanda, March 2011


That's right folks, the time will come in August for me to return to the States to finish up my architecture licensing hours as well as the exams.  This summer, the UK office is taking a sabbatical of sorts from any project trips in order to focus on PR and spreading the word about eMi within the UK.  Thus, our project trip to Rwanda this spring would be my last with eMi UK! Hopefully not the last one ever, but for the time being.


With this in mind, it would mean so much to me if I was able to raise money enough to participate on the design team!  There are links at the top of this page that will take you to pages where you can easily donate whether you reside in the UK or the US. 

The Hospital


Kibogora Hospital is a rural hospital located in southwest Rwanda . It was established first as a dispensary run by missionary nurses until the early 1960's, when the first expatriate doctors arrived. By the end of the 1960's it was operating as a full hospital and by 1970 it had grown to 120 beds. 

Kibogora now has 260 beds, and is the district referral hospital for ten outlying health centres. It also has an affiliated school providing nursing and scientific training. 

The Kibogora complex provides the only hospital service in a district of approximately 250,000 persons. 


Services

The hospital provides surgical, general medical, paediatric and maternity services. There is an X ray department and the hospital is one of the few in Rwanda able to provide both ultra-sound and gastroscopic examinations. There are weekly eye clinics and the dental department is the only one in the district offering preventative treatment.

There are currently seven doctors working at the hospital with a staff of 150.

In 2007 the hospital admitted 6963 patients and an additional 13,078 outpatients were seen. 

With the enhanced facilities provided in the new HIV/Aids building the level of service available to this goup of patients has been greatly improved. In 2007 there were 1640 patients on the HIV treatment program and 12253 people had received counselling.

During 2007 there were 215 seriously malnourished children under 5 years old admitted to the feeding program, this is an increase on the previous year and the indications are that this trend is likely to continue. In addition there were 225 malnourished children admitted suffering from Aids related illneses.

EMI + Kibogora Hospital

Our brief at Kibogora  is to redesign, on its current site, a large portion of the existing regional hospital. Not only is this hospital the biggest one in this part of Rwanda but, according to our client, it is also the best hospital (in terms of service provision) outside of Kigali. Kibogora is located about 5-6 hours bus journey to the SW of Kigali and the hospital there has 260 beds; as well as several thousand outpatients. 

OUR TASK

EMIUK has been asked to complete the following work;

1. Carry out a survey of the whole site as it is right now including the positions of boundaries, entrances, numerous retaining walls, changes of levels, roads and footpaths.

2. Complete an internal, as well as external, survey of all the existing buildings.

3. Design a new phased master plan to incorporate new roads, new building locations, new ward and clinic layouts, new landscaping features and new servicing areas.

4. Replan a number of existing buildings so that they will become more effective, more hygienic, safer and more sustainable.

5. Design a number of new buildings taking into account the expected phased growth of the hospital over the next 10 years.

Focussing attention to the current need, the existing facility is in dire need of repairs in addition to the new buildings that our client is asking for. If we can help with this work, as well as complete the items listed above, we will have made a huge impact for both the short as well as the longer term health of the people of this part of Rwanda.

http://www.kibogora.org/Hospital.php

I am very much looking forward to this project!  It is an appropriately epic project for my last one  and I hope that you will partner with me in seeing it through!

Cheers!

Carissa

India 2.0

A very good friend of mine often uses the expression:


Do what you love and don't lie.

I love emi. I love the work I am doing here. I love England. I love British culture. I would be lying, however, if I said I loved blogging.


I love that blogging about my experiences here includes you in my life and in the ministry you are helping to support, but writing long accounts of my trips takes it out of me.  This is not meant to be an excuse, merely a confession and perhaps a bit of insight as to why my blog entries have become sparse as of late.  Even so, I do wish to keep you all in the loop so I do apologize for just now getting around to recording my time in India.


I returned from my past project trip to Vellore, India a week or so into October.  It turned out to be a unique but exciting trip! My pictures from the trip have been up on my picasa site for a while so take a look at those if you havent already.  The captions usually give a good summary as you scroll through them.


The India trip started out crazy, which seems now to be the norm for these projects!  The project our team had been expecting to go do was with a ministry called the HOPE House.  They run a girl's orphanage in Vellore, India.  A couple of weeks before the trip, the ministry notified us that the land they expected to own had not been purchased yet and thus, they did not want a team to come design anything yet.  It was at this point I was leaving for Mussoorie, India with one of our interns to go work at the eMi office in India for a week before the project trip took place.


Deb and I took off for Delhi not knowing what exactly our team was meant to be doing when we all arrived.  Once arriving up the mountain to the office in Mussoorie, we set to work despite our rainy arrival to commandeering the eMi India storehouse of CAD standards and project knowledge.  Due to monsoon rains, there was much time spent indoors with chai, books (namely Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and the Bible), and a blanket.  The amazing thing about monsoon rain is its predictability.  After the afternoon rainstorm, we would go out for a walk around the hilly village.  The majority of the office staff and interns were out on project trips so it was a quiet week with only one two other staff members and two little ones roaming around the office.


In that one week, we found three other potential projects and lost three potential projects in Vellore.  After a while I stopped paying attention to whether we had a project to go do or not.  Seeing as we all had plane tickets already and a place to stay, the rest of the uk team decided to come out anyway and meet up with a team from the India office.  The plan from the beginning was to join with them in Vellore for devotions and meals but work on separate projects.  The hope was that there would be enough work for two or three extras on their project for some of our team members while Mike and I networked and drank chai :)  or at least that was my hope.

Remember that crazy rain in Pakistan? There was a slight bought of it in northern India as well.  A couple days before Deb and I as well as Matt and Ivy (directors from the India office) were meant to catch a two day train from Dehradun to Chennai, rain poured all day long without ceasing.  The morning of the train, we find that rain had flooded the tracks and collapsed a temple wall in the path of our train.  This particular train runs once a week of course.  leaving us a choice between showing up a week late for our two week project trip or try to get to delhi and hop a last minute flight to chennai.  Matt knew of two missionary friends of his traveling to Delhi that very day and thus we hitched a ride.  What should be about a five-eight hour drive took us 14 hours.


The same destructive rains took out a bunch of bridges, making the main roads impenitrable.  Forced to take the unpaved, poorly marked back-roads, we found ourselves weaving between and sometimes through precarious puddles the width of the road...

After getting to Delhi somehow our GPS switched its destination back to Dehradun so we then proceeded to drive in a huge two hour long circle around Delhi.  Needless to say, it was a particularly joyous occasion when we finally arrived at the house we were staying that night before our flight the next morning.




That brings us to south India, to the state of Tamil Nadu.  Home of fantastic cuisines such as idlis, dosas, coconut curries, rassam, vada and amazing chai and coffee!

I am looking past the agonizing heat and my swollen feet from so many mosquito bites and focusing on the goodness.


As for the project
God worked everything out magnificently.  Our team ended up having five different small projects to work on and Mike and I still got our networking and chai breaks in.  There were a couple of guest houses for a ministry called MUT.  This ministry supports missionaries by providing guest houses for much needed vacations, sabbaticals, and retreats while they are serving around the country.  There was a hostel and retirement home for the KIM ministry who wanted to provide these services to a village community outside of Vellore.  

We visited and designed toilet blocks, landscaping, and a chapel for a slum site and a gypsy site.  And I worked on a planning feasibility study as well as a preliminary building design for the new HOPE House orphanage.  


A couple of the girls at the gypsy site really stole my heart while we were visiting there.  Right after stepping out of the van a group of kids gathered around us and all of them wanted to shake our hands to say hello! None of them knew English but two girls in particular followed my every move and kept trying to repeat my name.  As I parted the rest of the team to roam around the site and document the site via photography, the two girls figured out what I was doing and ended up leading me around and pointing to things that I should take pictures of: a rabbit cage, a boy asleep in a hammock, pathways, houses, and the like.  They would travel in front of me, one pulling me along by the hand the other shooing people in front of us away to make room for the picture scene.  Meanwhile the ginnie and adam were testing the drinking water for bacteria which had drawn a huge crowd of on-lookers.  This is not unusual; however, this crowd proceeded to bring them chairs to sit in, brought large fronds to fan them with, and even found an electric fan for them! After they had finished the water tests, they all clapped for our engineers! 


The love and hospitality of these people who have so little in the way of possessions absolutely exemplified what the joy and love of Christ means when put into action.  A people we could hardly communicate with, had never met before, and spent only about a couple hours with, reached me with a more tangible picture of Christ's love than I had ever experienced.  How appropriate that they would be viewed by the rest of the world as outcasts, down-and-outs, the poor people.  Perhaps richness should be measured in joy.


Before we left the site, we sang a song for the group and one of the children asked Jean, our host and translator, why my skin was so white.  Jean's reply, "Ask God."  The two girls then took off the necklaces they were currently wearing and put them over my head as a parting gift.  Never before had I wished more that I had been wearing jewellery that day so that I could exchange with them.  Maybe next time we meet, God will point them out to me so I can give them one of my necklaces.




HOPE House (Helping Orphans Prevail in Everything)

Also a tremendous ministry.  HOPE House, India, run by Ruby Nakka, provides girls whose parents are deceased or otherwise unable to care for them with housing, food, medical needs, health programs, activities, bible teaching, and education.  The belief of HHI is that their role is to provide the parents or guardians with support to be able to care for the girls within their own home as the first option and as a last option admitting them into the HOPE House.  When the family is at all capable of caring for the girls, they act as a support and encouragement to the family in order to keep the children at home.  When this is not an option, a girl will be admitted to the HOPE House family.  Once staying at the HOPE House, the girls are still strongly encouraged to keep up relationships with whatever family members they have so as to continue family ties.  The girls are taught responsibility, values, reading and writing, good hygiene and health habits, about the love of Jesus, and other important life skills.  The ministry is a fantastic example of a holistic ministry, teaching and providing love and care in all aspects of life for these girls.  HOPE House International plans to expand its reach to care for children with physical and mental challenges as well as children which are HIV affected.  The medical needs for the HOPE House children are graciously provided by the famous mission hospital Christian Medical College & Hospital, in Vellore.


Ruby grew up as an orphan himself in a an institutionalized orphanage and thus, has fashioned his girls home in the opposite manner.   He emphasizes that the house belongs to the girls and they thus feel responsibility and pride for it and upkeep it.  Because there are only 16 of them in the house, it has much more of a family feel to it. 

http://www.hhinternational.org/

The home that the girls live in currently is a rented property which they have to vacate in the next year.  As I said before they backed out of a full emi project because the land they thought they would own at the time of our visit was still being debated by their board of directors back in the USA.  However, the part that was being debated was the amount of land to be purchased.  The location of the potential site had been decided.  This allowed us to do a planning study showing how much would fit on different site size options and a preliminary building design for a new girls home.  Since coming back to the UK and doing master planning drawings such as this one, the ministry has decided to purchase a one acre site.  I am now working on a more solid set of building design drawings.  The goal is to get this mini report completed and sent back to India by the time I go home for the Christmas holidays so that they can use the design and layouts for pre-construction. 


Ironic then that I have time to do my blog now of all times.  This would be the reason we did not make it into the office today...


Again I apologize for taking so long to update you all.  Despite my lack of eagerness to blog, I thank you so very much for your continued support and making spontaneous projects in India happen!


From a lovely warm cup of tea in my hand, log fire in front of me, and cream scones on my lap, happy december :)


...next trip: hospital deisgn. Rwanda. March. be there.

Mussoorie, India

I apologize for not making time to write before I left for India, but I hope you will forgive me and accept this beautiful picture of the eMi South Asia office in Mussoorie, India as a token of my love :)

Deb, one of the fall 'Cali girl' interns, and I left on Friday and made the long trek by car, plane to Delhi, taxi across Delhi in the rain, train to Dehradun, and car ride up an incredibly windey path up to 7000 feet where Mussoorie is located.  We slept for something like 12 hours and have been lazing around the entire day so its been a excellent welcome! Plus... chai. I mean, there's chai. I love chai. Have I mentioned how much I love chai? I love chai.

Our project trip has taken a turn at the last minute once again, but by God's grace and provision another project has come up in the same area as the one we were planning for in Vellore.  It's all been very last minute so I apologize for not having all of the details to relay, but I know we will be designing for a mission that provides care and rehabilitation for alcoholics and drug addicts.  Vellore Life Challenge runs a men's residential center but has many centres around india.  I know that the residential centre is already established so we will most likely be providing additional space for their growth or for additional functions of service.  I will report back on the particulars!

We have a great team going, partly from the UK office and partly from the South Asia office.  I am really excited for everyone to meet up next week and get started on the design!

For this week, I am spending time in the South Asia office learning their methods and techniques and methodology for producing project reports and drawings.  Our UK office is still new and it will be very helpful to be able to learn from another eMi team who have been running since 1982!

Prayers for the upcoming project trip down in southern india, Vellore, would be so greatly appreciated!

More in a few weeks!
xx Carissa

funds 8_30

An amazingly huge thank you to those of you you just contributed to my support in the past few weeks! I was not sure I would see enough come in to cover the upcoming project trip to Vellore, India (see previous post) but God has provided once again :)

I also want to thank those of you praying for my housing situation- A couple from Colchester Baptist Church (where our eMi office is located) has offered me a room in their house until next year when my visa expires!! I am so grateful and excited to have a permanent home base and really close to the town centre too!!  Mike and Marietta are lending me a moped to get to the train station on so I am all sorted. The couple I am staying with as of next week are Ian and Susan Sydenham and their 14 year old son, David.  I previously stayed with them for a few weeks during the summer and had a wonderful time there, so I am excited about the prospect of being there long term.

Another super excitement with eMi currently is there is an experienced structural engineer who is thinking of joining eMiUK as permanent staff! As an office we have been praying for an experienced engineer or architect to come along and join the office as full-time staff since last April because currently we have only one staff member (Mike) in the office full time! So this would be an amazing answer to prayer if he decides to join us! His name is Ed and he has a wife Katheryn and son Noah.  Please pray for guidance and wisdom and that God would provide the financial support for them if this is where He wants them to be!!!

A personal Prayer Request: if you could please keep one of my best friends in the world, Liz and her husband Jamie, in your prayers.  Yesterday their apartment that they just moved into not a week ago burned down.  They are both safe but didn't manage to salvage really anything of their possessions.  It's really hard not to be able just to go and be with them right now.

much love
Carissa

We are on YouTube!

I feel so official! check out our project trip video from the African Dream Academy trip to Liberia!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9G0XXG-HwA


and thank you so much to those of you already sent in donations towards our next UK project for an orphanage design in Chennai, India!! You are amazingly spectacular!!

blessings to my brethern!

pressing on

 realize I just got back from the last trip, but we are already in the process of planning for and support raising for the next one in September!  Support-willing, I plan to go along on this trip as well which is to Chennai in southern India! I am so excited to go back to India!


The project is to design an orphanage for HOPE House in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India

HOPE House has a special ministry to orphans in Vellore area. They have invited EMIUK to provide the conceptual design of a children’s home for 40 children. The scope of work includes a masterplan for the 2.5 acre site and conceptual building design for the orphanage and first phase development. The project trip will be based out of the south Indian city of Chennai, and will be combined with another similar project in the same city.


http://emiuk.org/projects/projectprofile_IndiaUK1.html

What is also really exciting, is that I am going to spend a week in the eMi India office in Mussorie for the week prior to the project trip. Doing preparation work for the project trip as well as learning from how the India eMi office operates!  Once again support is needed to be able to make these projects happen.  The funding scale on the right has the amount I will need to go on the project trip in September including the week prior in the eMi India office.  On the left scale are running living expenses.  Thank you all again and please continue to keep me and eMiUK in your prayers!!

Liberia is like a Kola Nut...

... the initial taste is bitter but the after-effects are exhilarating.




After something like 20 years of civil war, the country of Liberia has begun to reemerge from the rubble.  The 'bitter taste' upon arrival perhaps came across partially because of my own attitude and partially because of seeing the state of affairs which the war has left in its wake.  The country's economy and infrastructure, crushed by war, remains in ruin.  The capitol of Monrovia remains without mains electricity or running water.  Corruption is prevalent and unemployment and illiteracy are endemic.  Extreme poverty plagues the city, the surrounding countryside, and the neighboring slums.  Atop of all that, it was hot, extremely humid, our site was in an uncleared jungle with crazy snakes and spiders and things, it was the beginning of monsoon season, and the malaria carrying-mosquitoes were out in full force.  Honestly, I wasn't all that excited to go.  I felt rather ashamed of my fear and reluctance, but nevertheless, it was there.




However, Liberia was exhilarating!
Like the kola nut (which I did get to take a bite of!) even though the first taste is bitter and almost unpleasant, so many good things come from it.


The kola nut, where Coca Cola got its name from, is native to Liberia and enhances alertness and physical energy, it elevates the mood, increases tactile sensitivity and suppresses the appetite...as well as contains my favorite stimulant, caffeine.

God is at work in Liberia in more ways than one.  But one that I got to experience first hand was through Sam Enders and the African Dream Academy.  This man grew up in Liberia and like most of the children didn't attend school because he needed to do what he could to help bring in money for the family.  A bit later on in life this changed for him when he realized that he didn't have what some others had because he lacked an education.  With a new found motivation, he put himself through school at an accelerated rate and eventually, with the help of sponsors, made his way to the US for a college degree.


This rare opportunity is sought by many and presented to few, and of those few, even fewer return to their native country after finishing an education abroad.  By the grace of God, Sam Enders was one of those few.  Having surrendered his life to the Lord, he decided that after being blessed with an opportunity to study in the States, he would use his privilege to help advance God's kingdom in his home country as well as do what he could to help bring what he so eagerly desired and so luckily acquired to the masses of children without one, an education.


Decorated with an MBA and Masters of Divinity, Sam has started an organization by the name of African Dream Academy, and through it hopes to bring a quality education to children across Liberia without a high cost.  Investing in the children seems to me to be the surest way to positively affect the future state of the country and give God a stronghold on the direction and future leadership of the country.




It is easy to get excited about being somewhere new when you know that the work you are doing is enabling a ministry like the African Dream Academy to realize its vision.  


From the point of hearing Sam's story and his vision for ADA, God took away my apprehension and fears.  Like the caffeine in the kola nut, He stimulated me.   


I find it rather refreshing that even through fear and hesitation, God can use a faithful heart.  

Our design team was A-mazing. People who love God and desired to be closer to Him and desired to serve Him with what gifts they've been given served along side me.  As I mentioned, the site we set out to survey and design for was pretty much rainforest, accessible only by crossing a 150 foot wide river by dug-out canoe.  That plus Jessica's posh hat riding along behind me on the water transported me to the middle of an old colonial exploration, that or The African Queen.


Jean and Sully our two amazing civil engineers spent about a week and a half following guys with machete's around in order to survey the perimeter of the land, only to find that the plot was not what we thought it was.  The deed that ADA had for the piece of land was 85 acres, but the plot of land we surveyed was about 45!  Turns out that about half of what looked like land from a satellite areal image, was swamp.


What was amazing was seeing God work through this.  What could've been viewed as a disaster by both parties, He used for His glory.  eMi recognized that regardless of whether we got to design a full project or not, without the survey we did, ADA would have continued to invest money and time into a site that was half the size they needed with very poor access.  ADA recognized that without this mishap they would've never thought to explore other options for a site, which they were forced to do.  As it turned out, just north of the river a whole village was living without any access to a school.  Because of the river, they had been rather cut off and no development had ever moved to them. Now Sam is in the process of purchasing a new site, big enough for the whole design and in a place where the need is the greatest! Praise God :)


The other good news is that even though we didn't design a school campus for a specific site, we made one up. It was pretty awesome drawing in a river and trees where we wanted them to go rather than working the other way 'round.  The building designs were made so that they could be adapted to any site around the area...as long as it wasn't in a swamp...When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England....eh, yes. where was I...


thus, we actually did do some design work even though there is not a site for it yet!
and for your viewing pleasure, our fly-through video of the scheme:
(cant get the insert to work so heres a link)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVTEWNEtpnE




All in all, I had a wonderful time seeing God moving in Liberia and designing some awesome naturally ventilated structures and a master plan on an illustrative site with an absolutely amazing team from the UK, USA, and Ghana! Oh and I celebrated my birthday in Africa! It was a pretty darn sweet trip.    


I am so sorry this has taken so long to post up! Lots has been happening since I got back but really I am just a slacker face who likes sleeping more than writing, so I apologize.  
Do take a look at my picasa site with select pictures from the trip!! 




and to update you a bit with Prayer Requests:
the couple I used to stay with in London while working on monday and tuesdays, had a still birth a couple of weeks ago. It was their first baby so it was extremely heart breaking.  This couple is actually daughter to Mike and Marietta who I was living with in Colchester, and because of this, I have moved to a different host family's home in Colchester to allow them to have space at Mike and Marietta's place while they need it.  I know Lore and Jon would appreciate prayer for healing  and comfort.


At the moment, I am living with Jessica (one of the summer interns) with a lovely couple and their youngest son, Ian, Susan and David Sydenham.  They are amazing for opening up their home so last minute to me and now are living with two extra people in the house.  Things are not quite sorted out long-term as far as living arrangement goes, however, and although I can be a spontaneous being, I don't much like living out of a suitcase for long periods of time.  I would love it for you to pray for a place to stay, with easy access to work/trains to work, where I could stay from now until next April.


I would love for you to remember me as I am currently in constant conversations with God about how to live each day as if I actually knew my life is eternal and yet that life here could end at any moment.  It's something people throw around all the time: live like there is no tomorrow...seize the day...etc...but I know my priorities would be different if I actually lived in Christ's eternal perspective every moment.  How important are the things on top of my to-do-list? Half the time I make them so important merely because of the existence of the to-do list.  This stems from another prayer request really.  One of the vicars, Bob, at the church I attend, St. John's in Colchester, has been diagnosed with a form of cancer in his abdomen and has been given six months more to live.  He is truly an amazing man and an inspirational spiritual leader. Prayers for him, his family, and his congregation would be greatly appreciated.


And of course continued prayer for African Dream Academy as we at the UK office finish up drawings and the report for them and as they embark on their fund-raising campaign to raise the money needed to see this project through! www.AfricanDreamAcademy.org


See the top of the blog for my picasa link or watch some of them go by on the right hand side bar :)  Thank you once again to all who have been praying for and supporting me and who made it possible for this design to happen and ultimately for these kids in Liberia to have the opportunity to go to school, get an education, and learn about how Christ loves them!


as the British say
Ta-ra Chuck

Off once again

This time Liberia, Africa.

This month has been so crazy. I apologize for the sparse correspondence.  Right after I returned to the UK, the emi UK staff had a vision weekend away which was super.  Then we put together a flat for the summer interns who were on their way.  My sister came to visit. The three amazing interns arrived. Orientation happened.  I flew to New York for a wedding. and Tomorrow I leave with a team to go design an orphanage outside of Monrovia, Liberia.

If you've been following my blog, you will remember I wrote about the project in Liberia when I first started raising support for it.  However, there has been some conflict between the local ministry we were serving there and their international headquarters.  So we have postponed that project to a later date.  God had another project ready to go at a drop of a hat which happens to be within a few miles of the original one!  We didn't have to change around flights or accommodation or anything! So crazy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D-D2kswYzI&feature=channel

The African Dream Academy


Monrovia, Liberia




Who They Are: "To feed an African child is good, but to educate an African child is better"
The African Dream Academy is a Christian organization dedicated to making Liberia a better place by empowering orphan youth and children to achieve their dreams through providing a quality education that addresses their spiritual needs and provides them technical skills without a high cost.


Where the eMi Team comes in: On the 85 acre site outside of Monrovia, African Dream Academy would like to build a technical and vocational school with classrooms, a multipurpose hall, staff and student boarding, etc.


And thus, I embark on a a journey to Africa tomorrow.  This has been a rather quick introduction to our project, but there is still much to be done before leaving in the morning.   


Prayers.


Please keep me and the rest of our team in your prayers over the next couple of weeks! It is suppose to be quite hot and in the middle of monsoon season, which is not my ideal comfort climate. Prayers for safety, for unity of our team, a good witness while we are there, and an awesome design that we can pass on to the ADA ministry!!


Thank you all so much!

April Update

I made it back to the UK in one piece! The survey equipment made it back with me except for the tripod which was 11in higher than the max. linear footage which constituted oversized luggage.  Because fluttering my eyelids didn't work, instead of paying $400 for a tripod to be checked, my parents shipped the thing for a third of the price.  So the tripod is on its way still.

Now I have to motivate myself to go back to work :)

Thanks for all the prayers regarding the visa and the flights!

Here is my current funding status for project costs and misc. costs!
Happy end of April!

iceland could borrow some of wyoming's wind without us noticing the loss

i have a new flight scheduled from denver on friday arriving at london heathrow on saturday morning. here's hoping for wind over Iceland.

Loving friends sent this to me as encouragement before I get into an airplane.  They're irreplaceable really.

i would recommend not ever planning to fly with me

right. last time it was a strike, the time before that a snow storm. I seem to provoke flight disruptions on international flights.


my scheduled flight for today was just cancelled due to more volcanic ash. at least there's the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing the UK Border Agency would have let me into the country this time. 


but for now, I shall have to enjoy the thought of my visa rather than enjoy its functionality 

it's official. I fly back to the UK on tuesday :)
UPS faithfully delivered me my Passport and Visa

Success.

12:11pm
UK Tier 5 Charity Visa Issued.

Still waiting to receive it in the mail but looks like I will be headed back to London on the 20th of April as planned!!!  Praise God :)  Visa FTW

and now I am headed to the eMi Colorado Springs office to pick up survey equipment and see Heather! road trip!

waiting for a visa...

Last Friday I arrived back in the States just in time for Easter festivities with the family at my home in Wyoming.  The reason for the flight home, however, was in order to reapply for a UK Charity Visa.  Apparently the charity visa is in the one tier of visas that cannot be applied for within the UK.  Of course this was only figured by me after first applying for the visa back in February, while already working at eMiUK, and having the application rejected.  Thus, I am now taking a forced holiday back in the States in order for me to return back to the UK to continue my work with eMi.  The application is supposed to process within 10-15 business days. My application should arrive to the consulate on Wednesday (tomorrow) and I have a flight scheduled to return me to London Heathrow on the 20th of April, so not to put a time limit on you, God, but it'd be nice to have a visa by that time! :)

In the meantime, I am doing a bit of remote work here and there as well as spending time at the sewing machine and in coffee shops about town.

I also decided it was time to give my head a change once again...

Prayers for a UK Charity Visa by the 20th of April would be much appreciated! I won't be able to return to work with eMi in the UK office unless I get a visa.  I'll let you all know how things turn out as soon as I hear back!

life as a LTV

life as a long term volunteer at eMi...well crazy

For the past month I have been settling in to life in Colchester where our new eMi office is located. Colchester is an old town outside of London about 45mins by train.

  









 I am staying with Mike (eMi UK Director) and Marietta Woods and their adopted daughter, Lela, in Great Wenham.  We live in a nice old country house called The Baylies that is dated something like 100 years old and located about 10 miles outside of Colchester.

By far my favorite spot in the house: the lovely little conservatory off the kitchen facing the back garden. A perfect spot for tea times :)

My room is upstairs. Mike and Marietta lived in Uganda for a time, and thus the majority of my furnishing happens to be tribal drums! ..the shoes and ducks are my contribution.

Because we are out in the middle of no-where-ville, the extra car in the drive has been entrusted to me for the time being.  Let's just say that learning manual for the first time while attempting to remember how to maneuver round-a-bouts and drive on the wrong side of the road has been entertaining for all spectators.

Our brand new office is finally up and running after a month's worth of painting, furniture buying and assembling, fighting with internet and phone lines, and redrilling holes for shelving in 100-year-old plaster.  We plan to fit three interns, two ltvs, and director in this tiny room...don't ask me how :) Note the pink guitar in the corner above my workstation.  It's a necessary piece of equipment, I assure you.  We are now officially located in the back of the Colchester Baptist Church.

I have been attending Sunday Services at St. John's Church in Colchester.  It's a wonderful Anglican Church with a heart for serving God and following His Spirit. Lela and I are excited to continue getting more plugged in the community there!



So that's my life for now. Until our trip to Liberia in early June, I will be finishing up the project report for the India trip, writing an article for the ACDP (Association of Christian Design Professionals), helping with Intern Orientation for the summer term, and preparing for the project trip to Liberia...with a detour home for a couple of weeks to sort out my visa!

funds 3_02

Special thanks to those of you who recently sent in gifts! The cost of my flight back to the US to reapply for a visa has been covered as well as my participation on the project trip to Liberia in June! Thanks to you all, I can now commit to that orphanage project outside of Monrovia! Thank you ever so much!!!! I am so excited to be able to contribute to the design and the project team this summer :)  Praise God so much for our Christian family that crosses oceans and cultures!